1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print system comprising a host computer and a printer connected to the computer, and more particularly, to improvements in the technique of specifying a print mode with respect to a printer at the time of printing of a document.
2. Description of the Related Art
In this type of print system, an application program installed in the host computer prepares a document, and a printer driver constituting a part of an operating system is initiated to print the document. In response to user instructions, the printer driver determines setting values which specify a print mode (e.g., paper orientation, paper size, type of paper, resolution, a color/monochrome printing mode, a color conversion table, half-toning operations such as error diffusion filtering or dither filtering, print density, a dot gain, a color balance, lightness, chroma, or the like). Subsequently, the printer driver converts the document prepared by the application program into a data format capable of being printed by a printer according to the setting values, sending the thus-converted data to the printer.
In a conventional system, the setting values determined by the printer driver are stored in the host computer as a part of each document data set together with the document data set.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an conventional print system.
In an illustrated example, two printers 5A, 5B are connected to a host computer 1 via a network 3. Printer drivers 7A, 7B for use with these printers are installed in the host computer 1. Further, document files 9, 11, and 13 printed by the printer 5A and document files 15, 17 printed by the printer 5B are stored in the host computer 1. The document files 9, 11, and 13 include setting values A1, A2, and A3 determined by the printer driver 7A, and the document files 15, 17 include setting values B1 and B2 determined by the printer driver 7B.
In the conventional print system shown in FIG. 1, each of the document files includes setting values for printing. This means that only the setting values capable of being recognized by the application that has prepared the document file can be stored. For example, even if a printer manufacturer equips his printer with a new function (e.g., a new color conversion table or a new half-toning algorithm) and designs the printer so as to enable a user to set the function through use of a printer driver, the application program fails to understand the setting values for the new function. Hence, the setting values are not stored in the host computer. Accordingly, in order to utilize the new function, the user is required to repeatedly carry out the same setting procedures every time a document is printed, rendering a print operation inconvenient.
Also, for example, with regard to the conventional system shown in FIG. 1, if an attempt is made to print the document file 9, which has been most recently printed by the printer 5A, through use of the printer 5B this time, the setting values A1 appended to the document file 9 cannot be used. For this reason, new setting values must be determined through use of the printer driver 7B. In contrast, even in a case where the document file 9 is printed through use of the same printer 5A, if there is a desire to use the setting values (e.g., setting values A2 appended to the document file 11) used for another document file or to use the setting values employed for printing the same document file 9 in the preceding processes, such setting values cannot be used, and setting values A2 must also be reset. As mentioned previously, if there is a desire to use another printer or another setting value which is the same as that of another document file, the setting value that has been set for another printer or set for another document in the preceding processes cannot be used. Therefore, new setting values must be determined, also imposing an inconvenience on the user.